But such an attitude is utterly contrary to the puerile anti-English prejudice expressed by Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell — who began the World Cup by declaring his support for England's group rivals Trinidad and Tobago.

Tragically, the forces unleashed by Scottish devolution are now making Mr Brown's approach more rare. Last week, two English football supporters were savagely beaten up in a Renfrewshire pub. Days earlier, the Commission for Racial Equality felt compelled to warn Scots not to display anti-English bigotry.

The truth is that there has never been a worse time to be English in Scotland and the reason is clear. The reckless constitutional vandalism by which Tony Blair created a Scottish Parliament is wrecking the Union.

Devolution let Scotland have its cake and eat it, but at the expense of anti-English sentiment in Scotland — and a growing backlash in England. The latter is inexcusable, but it is easily explained.

In Scottish schools, children are taught a deeply symbolic lesson about imperialism. There was only one Scottish colonial adventure — the Darien scheme of 1698, which was a calamity.

One thousand two hundred settlers of the Scottish East India Company were sent to establish a trading post in Panama, but within a year, desertion and death destroyed any prospect of success and 900 survivors fled.

As a result, it's not surprising that Scotland abandoned imperialism. But has it? Since Edinburgh-born Mr Blair took power, talented Scots have been encouraged to build a new empire. It is called England.

The major institutions of the British state are now dominated by Scots. Apart from huge representation in the Cabinet and in Blair's circle of McCronies, the wider arms of government and the quangos that it appoints, together with powerful parts of the media that is supposed to scrutinise them, are Scottish enclaves. So are key areas of industry, showbiz, business and sport.

Of course, none of this influence in the upper echelons of the British Establishment would be controversial if Britain was still a thriving unitary state. In 1902, when the obnoxious polemicist T. W. H. Crosland complained that 'England is virtually run by the Scotch', he was condemned as a bigot. But now, with Scots-born politicians leading both Labour and Liberal Democrat parties and Mr Brown poised to replace Mr Blair, the legitimacy of Scottish influence is in question.

As the Scottish Affairs Committee of the House of Commons recognised earlier this week, the Scottish presence at the heart of the British state is no longer based on equal citizenship. Such inequity, it warned, could lead to English voters deserting Labour if Mr Brown becomes Prime Minister.

The Scottish Parliament was created to put Scottish affairs in Scottish hands. But, in fact, it has subjected English affairs to an unprecedented degree of Scottish control while denying English people to power in Scotland.

Only a handful of people born O outside Scotland sit in Holy-rood. It is inconceivable that an English politician could be elected First Minister.

Down in London, the Glaswegian Michael Martin is Speaker of the Commons, but no English politician can hope to fill the equivalent post of Presiding Officer at Holyrood.

Of the Scots who made New Labour — Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Smith, Robin Cook and Donald Dewar — only Dewar returned to the Edinburgh Parliament. Since its creation, traffic has stampeded in the opposite direction.

If membership was accorded in proportion to population, Scotland would have two ministers in the British Cabinet. But there are seven. Also, there are more than 106 Scottish MPs sitting in Westminster. It is not

just the number of Scots in government that highlights the rank inequality devolution has created. They have disproportionate influence, too.

And the Scots do better out of the public purse than their southern cousins. Public spending is £1,503 per head higher in Scotland than in England.

Such largesse has created 52,000 new government jobs, abolished student tuition fees and provided free nursing care for the elderly. But the Scots who lavish this generosity on their own constituents deny the same policies to England.

Astonishingly, given the fiercely independent status of the Scottish legal system, English law is entrusted to the care of the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, Lord Falconer (Mr Blair's oldest Scottish crony and Trinity College, Glenalmond-educated former flatmate). Blair's Scottish elite includes several people with similar personal connections.

His first office manager was Anji Hunter, a former pupil of St Leonard's School in St Andrews, whom he first met at a school party. She is as much friend as colleague. So is Inverness-born Lord Irvine, the last man to hold the 1,400-year-old English post of Lord Chancellor.

Unsurprisingly, English politicians are beginning to demand that the ruinous consequences of devolution must be corrected. They know that Mr Blair has poured investment into Scotland at the expense of parts of England where government expenditure is urgently needed.

While Scottish political leaders would be fools to refuse free gifts, a sensitive prime minister, keen to preserve the union that has served England and Scotland well for nearly 300 years, would recognise this as a bad moment to rub English noses in Scottish influence. Yet Mr Blair does the opposite.

With contempt for the tolerant togetherness that built an empire and defeated Hitler, he has continued to promote Scots in English public life. The injustice has become so glaring that former Tory minister Michael Portillo suggested this week that the time has come for Scotland to 'sever the apron strings that bind it to England'.

That would be a catastrophe. The Union is worth far more than a tinpot parliament in Edinburgh that many Scots now despise as sleazy and incompetent.

But why has Blair sat back and watched his botched attempt at devolution create such disharmony? Supporters of Gordon Brown suspect they know. They believe Mr Blair's determination to block the Chancellor's route to 10 Downing Street is so profound that he is willing to damage the union to achieve his goal.

They accuse him of deliberately stimulating anti-Scottish sentiment so that England will not tolerate a Scot as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. If true, such a tactic would be unforgivable.

From the moment that King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England, the Scottish contribution to British life has been immense. Scottish military men, entrepreneurs and lawyers made a disproportionate contribution to building and running the British Empire.

Scots served in disproportionate numbers in both world wars and won a reputation for remarkable bravery. Scottish soldiers confirmed their reputation in the Falklands War and are doing so

today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Scotland was the cradle of the Enlightenment ideas that underpin British democracy and the workshop of the empire.

A country containing just 10 per cent of the British people pioneered a disproportionate number of breakthroughs in medicine and engineering.

As a British patriot raised in Scotland, married to a Scot and living in Glasgow, I love Scotland. I desperately want Scottish influence in the UK to continue. Until the creation of the Scottish Parliament, it did Britain nothing but good. But I fear the consequences if Mr Blair continues to abuse it for his own selfish ends.

¦ TIM LUCKHURST is a former editor of the Scotsman and a former adviser to Donald Dewar.